New animal shelter chief inherits slew of challenges
Indianapolis Animal Care and Control is getting ready to hire its 11th leader in the past 12 years.
The new administrator's job, by many accounts, won't be easy.
Two committees that have reviewed shelter operations stress that significant changes need to be made, not only for the well-being of sheltered animals but to bring some stability to the agency's leadership.
Among their concerns: too few staff members to provide optimum care, an employee-hiring process that takes too long, animals getting too little interaction time with people, a full-time veterinarian position unfilled for months and a lack of proper places to isolate sick animals.
The shelter has shown improvement in recent years, as gauged by a steadily decreasing percentage of its animals that have been euthanized, from about half only a few years ago to about three in 10 now.
Still, the turnover in leadership alone hints at lingering issues.
Department of Public Safety Director Troy Riggs appointed the two committees to take a closer look. One set out to determine criteria for hiring a new leader, the other to look at shelter policies. The committees comprise City-County Council members, current and former shelter employees and people in the community involved with animal care.
Despite the improvement in animal adoptions, committee members and animal advocates remain concerned about care.
"It is universally understood — Republicans, Democrats, professionals, veterinarians, animal-welfare people — that the facility is completely and has been completely inadequate and inappropriate for the use that it was designed for," said City-County Council Member Zach Adamson, a chairman of the leadership review committee.
Problems at hand
Animal Care and Control, which falls under the Department of Public Safety like the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department and the Indianapolis Fire Department, is responsible for taking in stray and unwanted animals in Marion County. Unlike rescue groups, which can cap the number of animals they take, the shelter cannot. Lost animals can be claimed at the shelter, and people also can come and adopt animals. But when space has run out, the shelter has turned to euthanizing.
Members of the leadership committee outlined their concerns in a report of recommendations submitted to the Department of Public Safety.
"Indianapolis," the committee's report said, "is known not to pay its leader adequately, that the shelter and agency are ill-equipped, antiquated, inadequately budgeted, and that the leader does not appear to receive support from the administration. Each of these issues must be adequately addressed or the leadership position will continue to be a revolving door for which the animals and the community of Indianapolis will suffer."
The report from the leadership committee and a draft report from the shelter committee recommend a host of changes:
• The administrator's title should be changed to "chief," and the pay for the position should be bumped from $75,000 to $90,000.
• The number of kennel workers should be more than doubled, from 12 to 25, based on guidelines set by the Association of Shelter Veterinarians to allow 15 minutes to be spent with each animal and cleaning its cage daily. Darcie Kurtz, a former kennel manager for the agency who sits on one of the review committees, estimated that time spent with each animal was closer to five minutes during her experience at the shelter. Kurtz left in 2012.
• A veterinarian on one of the committees said the shelter needs to have appropriate isolation rooms for sick animals. Former office space is now used to quarantine animals, interim director Spencer Moore said.
• Some shelter supplies are missing. Others are broken. Some pooper scoopers have been "rigged and repaired rather than repurchased," the draft report says.
• The shelter doesn't use consistent food, which is not best practice for animals' diets. Food now is donated.
"It's not a clean, comfortable, safe and healthy environment," said Kurtz, who now works at FACE, a low-cost spay and neuter clinic.
Making strides
Department of Public Safety officials say they welcome the committees' input but question some of the issues raised.
"I can't even think of a time that they have needed something — microchips, medicine, antibiotics — that they didn't have the funding to it," DPS Deputy Director Valerie Washington said.
She and DPS spokesman Al Larsen said DPS holds weekly management meetings that include the head of Animal Care and Control. The hiring process for shelter employees has been eased, as well.
The shelter's "live-save" rate, a measure of how many animals are adopted versus euthanized, has improved dramatically in recent years. The rate was about 49 percent in 2011, DPS said, and so far this year is about 73 percent.
"I think there's just been just kind of a lot of dart throwing," she Washington said of the critical assessment of shelter operations.
"There's always just we need more, and I guess I would say we need more specific information on what that is and we would be more than willing to come to the table and walk through the needs and come up with a plan."
Washington said she thinks Animal Care and Control will need to see a change in the future, but "we're just not exactly sure what it looks like." A "solid needs assessment" needs to be done, she said.
Mayor Greg Ballard's proposed 2015 budget calls for about a $185,000 cut to Animal Care and Control's $4.36 million annual budget.
A new chief of the agency is expected to be hired soon.
The committee looking at the kennel policies won't conclude their meetings until early September. Washington also will be attending one of the committee's meetings.
DPS, Washington said, "will definitely include those recommendations and hand those off to the new administrator."
Reach Eric Dick, the editor of this story, at eric.dick@indystar.com or (317) 444-6306.